CosmicGamer said:
Check out the "Human Tolerance for Gs" thread for a discussion that might provide some useful bits.
The space shuttle does/did 1.7Gs to 3 G's during the different fazes of the takeoff.
Early experiments at 6 g for 10 minutes produced no long lasting medical issues. Tolerance was quite subjective, with only the most motivated non-pilots capable of completing perform simple physical and communication tasks. (Traveller Adventurers)
Most of the info I find is on long duration zero G. Part of the testing for reducing zero-g muscle loss included subjecting people to 2.5G's for an hour a day.
Granted, this still isn't that long.
I can't find results for more recent centrifuge testing for long distance space flight simulation but I'd guess, even at our current tech level, a properly medicated, trained and equipped person could handle 3Gs for several hours without any major medical issues.
Necessity is the mother of invention. I believe as the need grows and space flight to Mars progresses, the research will advance and the level of function and the length of duration will both increase, as will the amount of g-force.
For the King example, the anti-g suit would have medical monitoring with wireless data feed built in and a vehicle to keep a persons body in the optimal position might be needed. You wouldn't just step off the ship and walk to the local watering hole. lol
If I recall correctly 3g's is about the upper limit of where you'd need a G-suit to function as a pilot.
I don't know that the weight lifter analogies are that accurate: your own body weight is going to be much more evenly distributed than lifting weights outside your body. Still, the strain is going to be extreme. Sitting or semi-reclining is going to be the way to go for all but the briefest activities, and except for the most athletic of individuals you're going to risk a back injury just by bending over the wrong way.
That being said I've been subjected to around 1.5-2.0 G's for short periods of time, and even performing relatively simple tasks while sitting (in this case driving a car) is pretty damn fatiguing. Formula 1 drivers experience higher G-loads (about twice as much) and the races are longer but you're still talking around 2 hours total, with only a tiny fraction of the time under peak G-loading (maybe 5-10 minutes over the course of an hour of driving).
In general I assume that a healthy Earth-normal human on the surface of King is going to be as frail as someone at the extreme edge of old age (say a 90+ year old right now) with severe arthritis: movement is going to be a shuffling, very slow gait and walking across a small room is going to be exhausting. Any kind of fall is potentially very hazardous.
As I recall, the original Colonial Atlas stated that they initially tried Walkers (basically exoskeletons) initially, but even that didn't work out long term. I'd imagine that if one simply HAD to go to the surface of King they could use such a device with something similar to the G-suits fighter pilots use to avoid blacking out in air combat maneuvers. Even then, I don't think they'd manage more than a couple hours at a stretch. Given the huge expense of going into and out of King's massive gravity well even if you weren't risking long-term damage it's still probably more trouble than it's worth.
Either hire some locals to perform your mission for you for a short-term task, and long term tasks will mandate taking the King DNAM (or paying the locals more).
Remote control drones would be another option, and the time lag would not be too bad if from geosynchronous orbit.
